Resurrection Leo Tolstoy (ebook reader for pc .txt) 📖

which he did not at once understand. But when he came nearer to the people, he saw that they were all pressing against a net that divided the room in two, like flies settling on sugar, and he understood what it meant. The two halves of the room, the windows of which were opposite the door he had come in by, were separated, not by one, but by two nets reaching from the floor to the ceiling. The wire nets were stretched seven feet apart, and soldiers were walking up and down the space between them. On the further side of the nets were the prisoners, on the nearer, the visitors. Between them was a double row of nets and a space of seven feet wide, so that they could not hand anything to one another, and anyone whose sight was not very good could not even distinguish the face on the other side. It was also difficult to talk; one had to scream in order to be heard.

On both sides were faces pressed close to the nets, faces of wives, husbands, fathers, mothers, children, trying to see each other’s features and to say what was necessary in such a way as to be understood.

But as each one tried to be heard by the one he was talking to, and his neighbour tried to do the same, they did their best to drown each other’s voices’ and that was the cause of the din and shouting which struck Nekhlúdoff when he first came in. It was impossible to understand what was being said and what were the relations between the different people. Next Nekhlúdoff an old woman with a kerchief on her head stood trembling, her chin pressed close to the net, and shouting something to a young fellow, half of whose head was shaved, who listened attentively with raised brows. By the side of the old woman was a young man in a peasant’s coat, who listened, shaking his head, to a boy very like himself. Next stood a man in rags, who shouted, waving his arm and laughing. Next to him a woman, with a good woollen shawl on her shoulders, sat on the floor holding a baby in her lap and crying bitterly. This was apparently the first time she saw the greyheaded man on the other side in prison clothes, and with his head shaved. Beyond her was the doorkeeper, who had spoken to Nekhlúdoff outside; he was shouting with all his might to a grey-haired convict on the other side.

When Nekhlúdoff found that he would have to speak in similar conditions, a feeling of indignation against those who were able to make and enforce these conditions arose in him; he was surprised that, placed in such a dreadful position, no one seemed offended at this outrage on human feelings. The soldiers, the inspector, the prisoners themselves, acted as if acknowledging all this to be necessary.

Nekhlúdoff remained in this room for about five minutes, feeling strangely depressed, conscious of how powerless he was, and at variance with all the world. He was seized with a curious moral sensation like seasickness.

XLII

“Well, but I must do what I came here for,” he said, trying to pick up courage. “What is to be done now?” He looked round for an official, and seeing a thin little man in the uniform of an officer going up and down behind the people, he approached him.

“Can you tell me, sir,” he said, with exceedingly strained politeness of manner, “where the women are kept, and where one is allowed to interview them?”

“Is it the women’s ward you want to go to?”

“Yes, I should like to see one of the women prisoners,” Nekhlúdoff said, with the same strained politeness.

“You should have said so when you were in the hall. Who is it, then, that you want to see?”

“I want to see a prisoner called Katerína Máslova.”

“Is she a political one?”

“No, she is simply⁠—”

“What! Is she sentenced?”

“Yes; the day before yesterday she was sentenced,” meekly answered Nekhlúdoff, fearing to spoil the inspector’s good humour, which seemed to incline in his favour.

“If you want to go to the women’s ward please to step this way,” said the officer, having decided from Nekhlúdoff’s appearance that he was worthy of attention. “Síderoff, conduct the gentleman to the women’s ward,” he said, turning to a moustached corporal with medals on his breast.

“Yes, sir.”

At this moment heartrending sobs were heard coming from someone near the net.

Everything here seemed strange to Nekhlúdoff; but strangest of all was that he should have to thank and feel obligation towards the inspector and the chief warders, the very men who were performing the cruel deeds that were done in this house.

The corporal showed Nekhlúdoff through the corridor, out of the men’s into the women’s interviewing-room.

This room, like that of the men, was divided by two wire nets; but it was much smaller, and there were fewer visitors and fewer prisoners, so that there was less shouting than in the men’s room. Yet the same thing was going on here, only, between the nets instead of soldiers there was a woman warder, dressed in a blue-edged uniform jacket, with gold cords on the sleeves, and a blue belt. Here also, as in the men’s room, the people were pressing close to the wire netting on both sides; on the nearer side, the townspeople in varied attire; on the further side, the prisoners, some in white prison clothes, others in their own coloured dresses. The whole length of the net was taken up by the people standing close to it. Some rose on tiptoe to be heard across the heads of others; some sat talking on the floor.

The most remarkable of the prisoners, both by her piercing screams and her appearance, was a thin, dishevelled gipsy. Her kerchief had slipped off her curly hair, and she stood near a post in the middle of the prisoner’s division, shouting something, accompanied by quick